News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Jesin

Re:Ask YC: Six year old proposes new number on Monday June 16, 2008 @10:41PM (#219344)
No there aren't.
Re:Ask YC: Dealing with a major event like death? on Monday June 09, 2008 @06:10PM (#213281)
Do we really need to worry that much about derailing threads when we have nested replies?
Re:Ask HN: Bet the farm. Python or PHP? on Sunday June 08, 2008 @04:19PM (#212271)
This is a joke, right? You can't possibly be serious.
Re:Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types on Friday May 30, 2008 @10:56PM (#205048)
I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and I was glad to see it posted here. This poll also seems to have initiated (in my opinion) some of the best discussions I've seen on this board in a while. Although some polls and "Ask HN"s can be a bit stupid, the good ones are really good.

So, yeah, I'm an INTP. I've lately been acting a bit more E than usual, but I'm still definitely I (am all I am).

(Why oh why didn't Common Lisp abbreviate integerp?)

Re:Poll: Hacker News (Myers-Briggs) Personality Types on Friday May 30, 2008 @09:36PM (#205008)
The percentages have nothing to do with the results of this poll; they're the percentages for the population in general.
Re:Here Comes Everybody on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @05:26PM (#202645)
Already been posted.
Re:Ask HN: definition of a highlevel language? on Monday May 26, 2008 @07:03PM (#200516)
No, that's absurd. It's about the level of abstraction, not how close it is to natural languages. Yes, most natural languages support high levels of abstraction, but that does not mean that languages that support high levels of abstraction are close to natural languages. They can still be quite far apart in other ways.

Basically, low levels of abstraction are closer to the underlying mechanics. Higher levels of abstraction allow you to think about what happens without having to worry about the fiddly little details. It's like the difference between neurology (comparatively low-level) and psychology (higher level).

Re:YouTomb by MIT on Sunday May 25, 2008 @04:58PM (#199717)
Nice. I wonder, how long until someone sues them?
This article is better than its title would suggest, and most of it is not actually about TV or sitcoms.
Re:Experience as a teacher turns out to be worthless on Sunday May 18, 2008 @04:14PM (#193576)
No, it really depends on the teacher. My precalculus teacher (probably the best math teacher I've ever had) gives progressively harder tests/quizzes as we learn more about each topic. He ignores the textbook and writes the tests himself.

(Incidentally, we've recently been covering derivatives.)

Re:Ask YC: What books on marketing do you recomend? on Sunday May 18, 2008 @04:04PM (#193568)
I didn't actually come up with this, he did: http://xkcd.com/125/
If you apologize sincerely, the victim will be less angry? Really? You're kidding, right?
Re:Ask YC: What books on marketing do you recomend? on Sunday May 18, 2008 @12:44PM (#193443)
Just pick the one that's most popular :)
Re:Scribd Goes Straight, Bans Porn on Sunday May 18, 2008 @10:55AM (#193379)
In an essay published in the Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams said something about how every new medium starts out as porn, and the other genres move in afterwards.
Re:Firefox 3.0rc1 is now available for download on Saturday May 17, 2008 @08:56AM (#192603)
Nice. I hope they get this up on the *buntu repositories soon (I'm running Xubuntu but also have Ubuntu and Kubuntu installed).
Re:Ask PG: Shall we ban Techcrunch articles? on Monday May 05, 2008 @02:43PM (#181685)
No, don't ban them. I only read TC articles when they show up here.

The comments here are also good.

Re:What do hackers think of PHP? on Monday May 05, 2008 @12:45PM (#181557)
It's incredibly clean and simple.
Re:Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid; Walks Away From Deal on Sunday May 04, 2008 @11:13AM (#180829)
This could be the wrong way of thinking about it.

Maybe radical changes can only start within a certain distance from the top, and as the company gets bigger, the bottom moves further away from the top and can no longer initiate those sorts of things. Just a thought.

Re:Architecture astronauts take over on Sunday May 04, 2008 @10:24AM (#180802)
Oops. I guess I fail. I swear I saw a 1.
Really? Do ads for transistors describe them as "smart" or "magic"?

The idea here is not that abstractions are bad, it's that those that are frequently described by the people who made them as "smart" or "magic" are often not very helpful, and tend to do more harm than good. There are some exceptions, but good abstractions, while they may be described as "smart", don't usually include that in their name, and are rarely if ever called "magic".

Whee! Yet another Wave of the Future!

Hmm. Quantum computers or memresistor-based computers. What to choose? Maybe both, if someone can figure out a way to convert reliably between spin superpositions and resistance.

WTF is all of this going to do to teh intarwobs?

Re:Mozilla warns of Flash and Silverlight 'agenda' on Thursday May 01, 2008 @11:36AM (#178534)
Gaah. I'd really like to know how this guy came to the conclusion that FOSS relies on the government. WTF?
Re:Architecture astronauts take over on Thursday May 01, 2008 @10:49AM (#178482)
Just want to point out, this is dated April 2001.
Re:The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment on Monday April 28, 2008 @08:07PM (#176139)
Yes, I've heard good things about Mint. The only reason I've never used it is that there is no 64-bit version.
Re:Zed Shaw on Modern Literate Programming on Sunday April 27, 2008 @04:49PM (#175037)
Ahh, but if the code doesn't work, you can read the comments to figure out what it was supposed to do, and then fix it.
Re:Gin, Television, and Social Surplus on Sunday April 27, 2008 @04:41PM (#175031)
I thought those first two lines were pretty good. It's probably that last one that brought on the downmods.
Re:Ask YC: Anything better than Google notebook out there? on Sunday April 27, 2008 @04:28PM (#175028)
The list is a little confused. This site throws away single line breaks, except in

  code text, which you
  get by indenting lines by two or more
  spaces, like
  this.
Incidentally, why does this site throw away single line breaks?
Where did you get that generator? I want one!
Re:Nickb, Are you okay? on Friday April 25, 2008 @03:23PM (#173838)
Either your sarcasm detector is broken for writing this response, or mine is for thinking you were serious.

Or perhaps I'm getting a false positive and both of the above posts were serious.

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